


A Righteous Man

by LuckyDiceKirby



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, i'm sad about ibex and you should be too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 11:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7505827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/pseuds/LuckyDiceKirby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of excerpts from <i>A Righteous Man: The Life and Death of Attar Rose</i>, by Orth Godlove.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Righteous Man

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the finale of Counterweight.

_A series of excerpts from_ A Righteous Man: The Life and Death of Attar Rose _, by Orth Godlove._

_Introduction_

It's a hard thing to write the story of a man like Attar Rose, the man who later became Ibex, Candidate of Righteousness. 

It's a hard thing, because Ibex led a life that is not easily explained. It was a life complicated by ambition, and misplaced idealism, and above all, the talon-like grip of Righteousness. 

I knew Ibex a long time, and I knew him better than most. Even I cannot claim to know much about him at all. And of course, I only ever knew him as Ibex. I never met Attar Rose. 

Many of those who did, those who knew him best, those who might still have called him Attar, are no longer with us. His brother Quentin, later Jerboa, Candidate of Detachment, died in battle during an attack on the Chime, while his closest friend and partner, Maryland September, passed away while trapped on the planet September. Any insight they might have had into the mind of someone as enigmatic as Ibex has long been lost. 

I've tried to write the story of Attar Rose fairly. Ibex was not an easy man to like: I know this better than anyone. For a great many years, I hated him. A part of me--the part of me that is still a young man piloting a ship in the middle of the Golden War--still does. But by the time of his death, I had grown to respect him, although this respect was often grudging. 

Ibex was a man who made many mistakes. Perhaps his first, his most important, and his most irreversible, was taking on the mantle of Righteousness. But even without it, Ibex--or Attar--would always have been a righteous man, and one whose life would have great and far-reaching effects across the Golden Branch. He had something that is oddly rare among the leaders of our sector: he had vision, and the drive to reach for it. Ibex was a man of the Diaspora, and he believed in it deeply--and just a deeply, he believed that it could be better. 

I think this belief often led him astray. But I cannot fault Ibex in his conviction, only in his methods. I believe that throughout his long and tumultuous life, Ibex wanted to see the worlds of the Golden Branch become better. He wanted to leave behind a sector that was greater for his involvement in it.

Despite his missteps, despite his anger and his arrogance, I believe that in the end, Ibex accomplished his goal. 

When I look out from the windows of my apartment on Counterweight, I see a vast and bustling metropolis. I see people living a myriad of different ways, embroiled in every aspect of life: love and hate and loss, all mixed together and thriving.

I look out my windows, and sometimes I think that Attar Rose would be glad.

He was a selfish man, driven to the point of distraction by his beliefs and his prejudices, and he was egotistic to more than a fault. But he would look at what we have built on Counterweight, in the wake of Rigor's defeat, and he would smile.

I find comfort in that, though little else in Ibex's life is comforting. 

I have tried to tell this story--this difficult, complicated, convoluted story--as honestly and fairly as I can. There are surely places where I have failed. I can only hope that these pages will show one thing, the one thing that I am sure of: The Golden Branch was forever changed the day that Attar Rose was born, just as it was changed the day that Ibex died.

\-- _Orth Godlove, Centralia_

-

Attar Rose was raised on Vox, at the heart of the Diaspora, along with his younger brother Quentin. Information about that time was not an easy thing to find. There's a vast array of data available about the Candidate Ibex, though much of it is composed of rumors and half-truths. But there is almost nothing about the man Attar Rose. 

By chance, during a long drive one night, I stumbled across some useful files in an old Liberty and Discovery Automatic Corp database. Nothing too concrete: a few folders full of graduation footage, a set of downloaded television episodes originating from a household computer terminal on Vox, a series of messages sent back and forth between Attar and Quentin. Enough to glean the bare bones of what Attar's early life might have been like.

Much of it is not surprising: he was a bright child and a bright young man, always at the top of every one of his classes. He seemed, at least outwardly, nearly as self-assured as he would later be as an adult.

Attar's childhood was otherwise unremarkable. Up until his Candidacy, he led the life one would expect from the child of a Diasporan family on Vox. The most illuminating information that I was able to find had to do with his relationship with Quentin. I knew that Ibex had a brother, but he had never talked about him in my hearing. But Attar cared for his brother deeply, and seems to have been a cheerfully protective and encouraging older brother.

For a while, I wasn't sure if Ibex cared less for his brother after becoming a Candidate, or if he simply didn't like to talk about him. Eventually, though, I did find an answer.

The last message that I found between the two brothers was brief, and dated from long after they had each become Candidates.

I've reproduced it here in its entirety. I'm not entirely sure Ibex would approve, but the dead don't get to make those decisions. It said:

"Quentin.

I don't have a lot of time to write this message--you know how it is. Always working. 

I know you're supporting Grace. I can't pretend to understand what you think she's going to do for you, for us, for the Diaspora. Grace is nothing but stagnation personified.

All the same. The next time you see her, give Vicuna my best. 

This is getting away from me. You know how it is, don't you? Sometimes you start to do one thing and find yourself, inexorably, redirected into doing another. The price we pay for divinity, I guess.

I only wanted to say that--I know we're both Candidates now. Ibex and Jerboa. Righteousness and Detachment. But I'll always be your brother. They can't take that away from us.

If you ever need me, call. Open a door. I'll come." 

There was no reply.

-

Even now, after what feels like an endless number of years, and also sometimes like no time at all, I'm sure that the Golden War needs no introduction to the citizens of the Golden Branch. Certainly its heroes are well remembered: Jace Rethal and Addax Dawn and Tea Kenridge. We flew together, for a time. And for a long while, we flew with Ibex. Ibex joined our expedition in exchange for allowing us to drop refuges on the planet Gem, and he summarily took it over. 

I've written quite a bit about mistakes, both my own and those of others. I made some of my greatest mistakes while aboard the Kingdom Come, during the final stretch of that war. The first mistake I made was allowing Ibex to set foot on our ships. 

There's a bit of an old Earth poem, one the Apostolisians have gone to some lengths to preserve. It's a plea and a hope all at once: "Someday, maybe we will be able to look back at even these things, and smile."

With the benefit of perspective--or perhaps the benefit of distance--I'm able to look back on those days with something more than embarrassment and regret. I can trace a path, like that of a ship making its way between star systems, of myself in the Golden War to myself as I am now. I can see value in that path, full of pitfalls though it was. 

That time with Ibex taught me much about him, and just as much about myself. It was in those days that I learned how to be a leader, and I learned most of that by watching Ibex, and determining that I would not be like him.

That's not to say that Ibex was ever a poor leader. On the contrary: the men of every ship loved him. He briefly took control of Tea Kenridge's outfit, which dubbed itself the King's Gambit in his name. He brought about a greater consensus among the other leaders of our group than we ever had before or after his departure, largely because he united us against him. Knowing the splintering that would eventually spell the end of our group, it's hard not to respect that. But successful though he may have been, Ibex was the kind of leader I have never wanted to be.

I remember most the feeling of relief I had near the end of our journey, when we left Ibex to his own devices on Vox. Now, I can't help but think of how foolish I was being. It's a difficult thing, to confront all of the stupid decisions and careless miscalculations that I made when I was young. It's even more difficult to understand that I would not be where I am today without having made them. 

We left Ibex alone on Vox, and we thought that we had succeeded by ridding ourselves of him. And we had, at least in some small way. But what we didn't realize was that we had only delayed the inevitable play Ibex would make for control of the sector.

That lesson, too, became useful later. We were, after all, only able to delay Rigor at first.

-

The night that Ibex died felt as though it stretched out for many days--perhaps, when factoring in the intricacies of keeping time in the middle of dead space, it did. I watched it happen. 

He called us all together one last time--what was left of the Chime, and a few others. I won't say that I didn’t, just for a moment, balk at the invitation. I'd distrusted Ibex for so long that it had become almost second nature. 

But I'd seen what Ibex was willing to put on the line to defeat Rigor. I didn't trust Ibex about much, but I did trust him with this. 

Besides. If he'd wanted to spring a trap on us, I'm sure he would have been smarter about it. 

Ibex called us there because Rigor was finally about to escape the net that the Chime had ensnared it in five years previously, and he soon became the first casualty to its freedom. 

It's funny. Ibex was a military man, at least for a while, although he was never an exceptional pilot. But for some reason I couldn't imagine him dying in battle, the way so many military men do. I don't know how I imagined him dying--I suppose he seemed almost immortal. He was a Candidate for over fifteen years, which in practical terms is the same thing. 

I suppose I thought that someday, miraculously enough, he would retire. I always thought that I would retire, if I didn't die first, and here I am: retired and bored enough to write the story of my old rival. 

Before I started writing this book, I spoke with Aria Joie on the subject of Ibex's mistakes. She only met him a few times, but those meetings were significant. And of course, she now leads Ibex's old Righteous Vanguard, carrying Righteousness with her wherever she goes.

She told me that Ibex regretted most that he never saw Maryland September again, after he left September for the final time.

I can't help but think that in bringing us all together that day, part of his hope was that when that door opened up from September, maybe, just maybe, he might see Maryland one more time. 

We heard him through our comms. It was the last thing he said. Just her name, a question left hanging as Rigor's sword pierced his heart.

I don't know if I'm right. This is all conjecture, cobbled together from the vast wreckage of a dead man's life. But I am sure that this is how Ibex would like to be remembered: not as the man who came so close to controlling the Diaspora, not as the man who gave up so much as the Candidate of Righteousness, not as the man who spurred revolutions. But as the man who risked his life on the slimmest chance that he might see the woman he loved just one last time. 

It's maybe more than he deserves, but this is what I can give to Attar: the legacy that he wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> That old Earth proverb is from The Aeneid, because when given the opportunity to reference Virgil in fanfic I'm incapable of restraining myself. It's a problem.
> 
> I'm so sad about Friends at the Table always and you should talk to me about it on [tumblr](http://luckydicekirby.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/luckydicekirby).


End file.
